Echoes from My Past Lives (Spell Weaver) (2 page)

Then again, who was I kidding? This guy was just another hallucination. My trying to apply logic to the situation seemed pointless at best.

“Well, Taliesin,” said the stranger in a voice that could easily have been used in voice-overs, “I am glad that we can finally meet.”

I didn’t know what to say. How do you talk to a hallucination anyway? Should you even go there?

“Are you afraid of me?” asked the stranger.

Gee, why would you think that?
“I’m not afraid,” I replied in a voice whose tone clearly suggested I was.

“There is no need. I am here to help you.” His voice was gentle, and he was smiling a little now, but under the circumstances, I stayed on my guard.

“You have a funny way of showing it,” I finally managed. If he was a hallucination anyway, why bother to be polite?

“I can tell you blame me for what is happening to you.” The stranger looked genuinely concerned.

“Shouldn’t I?”

“No, not at all. In a way, I am as much of a victim as you are.”

“How so?” I asked suspiciously. Whoever—or whatever—he was, he did seem to want me to trust him, but the situation did not make me feel very trusting.

“I don’t know how to explain without confusing you more than you already are.”

“Give it a shot,” I suggested in a voice that sounded harder than what was normal for me. If this hallucination wanted to play mind-games with me, I was not going to make it easy.

The stranger’s brow wrinkled a little.

“I suppose that I must explain at some point. Perhaps now is the best moment we will have. Taliesin…”

“I go by Tal,” I said, rather rudely, still operating on the principle that there was no point in being polite to hallucinations.

“Tal it is, then,” he replied smoothly, obviously determined not to be put off by my manner. “That will make it easier to be clear, anyway. You see, my name is Taliesin too.”

“That’s not exactly a common name in America,” I muttered. I had never quite forgiven my parents for giving a name like that to me.

“I was not born in America. I come originally from a place near Lyn Tegid, today you would say Bala Lake, in North Wales.”

My family came originally from Wales, but I had never heard of Bala Lake, so how could a hallucination brewed up in my own head know about it? Of course, it could well be that there was no such place.

“Later on,” continued the stranger, “I was adopted by Elphin, lord of Ceredigion, and I served him well for many years. However, all things end eventually, and when Elphin passed on, I ventured out farther into the world, coming eventually to Camelot, where I served King Arthur.”

I had been listening half-heartedly, somewhat bored and waiting for him to get to some kind of point, but I couldn’t help but be surprised by the Arthur reference.

“What? How could you possibly…” I hesitated to finish. Why bother continuing a conversation with a hallucination?

“I never said I was from the same time you are. In fact, that would be quite impossible. But why does any of this surprise you? You were named after me, weren’t you? You know my story, surely?”

“Actually, I was named after my great uncle.”

Taliesin paused for a moment, then smiled. “Well, of course you were! I am learning that there have been a great many Taliesins in the family. It was perhaps arrogant of me to think that your parents named you after me. But if you trace the name back far enough in the family, you will come to me.”

I didn’t think anything would surprise me at this point. Clearly I was wrong. I was also, despite myself, intrigued.

“So you’re telling me that you are someone from the past, someone who was at Camelot with King Arthur, someone who is my ancestor.”

“Yes, and no,” replied Taliesin. “I lived a long time ago, far in the past from your point of view. I did serve King Arthur. I am an ancestor of yours. However…” He let the last sentence trail off and looked at me with those piercing blue eyes. “You are going to have a very time accepting the next part, I’m afraid.”

“Try me,” I said, somewhat impatiently. Yeah, against my better judgment, I was caught up in the story.

“I am more than an ancestor. I am you.”

“How is that possible?” I snapped, suddenly exasperated. Just when I thought I was getting a grip on what he was saying, he threw a curve ball like that!

“How could you be me? We’re talking to each other.”

Of course, I could have, uh, what’s the term for it? Split personality—no, there’s a newer term for it. Dissociative identity disorder, or something like that. Great! How many psychological problems could one person have all at once?

Taliesin seemed uncertain of how to respond to me—and I could tell from his general manner that he was not accustomed to being at a loss for words.

Stop thinking about him as if he were a real person!

“I know it is a lot to grasp,” he said finally, seeming to weigh each word. “I also know you can do it.”

“Yeah, I’ve been doing so well I’m in a hospital. Next I’ll be in a mental hospital.”

“Stop it!” snapped Taliesin. Despite myself, I backed away a little. He immediately calmed down. “I’m sorry. I know this is very, very hard for you.”

“Hard?” I almost yelled. “Hard doesn’t come close.”

“Listen to me!” he said quietly but with an intensity that made me pay attention. “We haven’t much time. I know you understand the idea of reincarnation.”

“How could you possibly know that?” It was true, of course—we had studied major world religions a little bit in school—but he could not possibly know…could he?

“I know many things,” Taliesin replied quickly. “Actually, I can know everything you know if I concentrate hard enough.”

“You can read my mind?” Given everything else that was wrong, I had no idea why that bothered me so much, but it did. Having my mind shattered into tiny pieces was bad, but having someone rummaging around in it was worse.

“Not in the way that you mean it. I can know what you are thinking not because I can read your mind, but because I am part of your mind. I wish you would stay calm long enough to let me explain. I cannot convey in mere words how important it is that you understand and accept what I have to say.”

“What’s so urgent?” I said, barely holding back my anger. Yeah, I was angry with him, feeling that he must be responsible in some way for what was happening to me. But I was also angry at myself for getting drawn into this dialog with someone I knew couldn’t be real. I was also frustrated, and tired, so tired, and so very ready for my life to be normal again. But what if, what if it never became normal again? What if this craziness was my new normal?

Abruptly the ground beneath me lurched so violently that I nearly fell. Taliesin looked around worriedly.

“Tal, we have less time than I thought. I want you to concentrate on staying with me, whatever happens. If we get separated, it may be difficult for me to find my way to you again.”

Another lurch, this one strong enough to send me sprawling on the ground. Hallucination or not, the impact jarred me just as if it had been physical. As I pulled myself up, I notice that the bright green grass at the far end of the meadow had suddenly gone angry, skinned-knee red. The color seemed to pulse like a heartbeat, to bleed into the surrounding grass, to spread like an infection, turning more and more of the meadow red, flowing quickly in our direction. The ground had also begun to bulge in places, as if something would explode upward from it at any moment. I knew this was a hallucination—it had to be. Still, something about the throbbing redness made me afraid. Despite myself, I backed in the general direction of Taliesin.

When I glanced back at him, he too was focused on the decaying landscape. He looked as if he wanted to draw his sword, but instead he began to strum his instrument. Then he began to sing calming lyrics in a strong tenor voice. At least, the tone of the lyrics was somehow calming, but I could not understand the language.

I looked back at the redness. For a moment it continued to flow forward, but then it shuddered to a stop. It continued to throb, however, and the throbbing picked up speed.

Then Taliesin stopped singing for just a moment, looked at me, and barked, “Help me!” with such intensity that for a second I wanted to cry. He wasn’t trying to be frightening, of course, but he scared me anyway.

“Help you how?” I asked in a tone that sound just a little whiny, even to me.

“Sing!” commanded Taliesin in a voice that sounded as I imagined King Arthur would have sounded.

“But I don’t…”

“Yes, you do. Sing, damn it!” I didn’t need to look to know that the redness had surged toward us again.

“What do I…”

“Sing anything! Just focus on keeping the redness back.” Then Taliesin began to sing again himself. I looked down at the ground and saw that the redness was flaming bloodily only about two feet away. It stopped again when Taliesin started singing, but as before, he did not seem to be able to push it back, only to keep it where it was.

You may remember that I was a musician…but I never said I was a particularly good one. Actually, I was the lead singer in a band, but our audience was typically the walls of a garage, and I kinda wanted to keep it that way. Still, the audience now was the inside of my head, so what did I really have to lose?

I glanced over at Taliesin again. His eyes had a feverish intensity to them, and sweat glistened on his forehead. Whatever he was doing was clearly straining him. I know this will sound crazy, but looking at him gave me a feeling of urgency.

But what should I sing? He had said I could sing anything, but I couldn’t think of a single song that didn’t seem ridiculous in this situation. Then Taliesin looked over at me, not commandingly but almost pleadingly.

Oh, what the hell?

So I started singing Jesse McCartney’s “Leavin’,” I suppose mostly because what I wanted to do more than anything else was leave. I was singing it a little higher than it was written, and my voice cracked more than usual, but I did sound a little like a singer. Just a little. I’m sure Jesse would have begged to differ.

Then the oddest thing happened. Taliesin and I were singing different songs, with very different melodies, in different languages. The combination should have sounded awful, even if I had been a real singer, but somehow it didn’t. Maybe I was even crazier than I thought, but I could hear the two sounds merging somehow, producing something different from either one. The redness could sense the difference too. It shuddered and actually receded just a little.

It took what seemed like an hour to wipe out the angry red and restore the original vibrant green of the grass. By that time I felt as tired as Taliesin looked, but I also felt strangely good. Yeah, I know—the more weird things I saw, the more I felt as if I really were crazy, and yet there was something satisfying about helping Taliesin, even if the whole thing was happening in my head.

What is it people say about questioning your sanity proving you are sane? Was I actually beginning to think I was sane, and did that mean the craziness had finally gotten me? Would I ever see my parents again? Stan? Eva? And, more frighteningly, what if I saw them and didn’t know who they were? Or what if I knew who they were but said or did things that convinced them I was hopelessly and completely nuts?

I jumped a little when Taliesin patted me on the shoulder. “Good job, lad! For a moment I wasn’t sure you were going to help me.”

“For a moment neither was I.”

Taliesin smiled just a little. “Nonetheless, you did, and that’s what matters. Well, that and the fact that you really aren’t ‘nuts.’”

The good feeling faded quickly. “I don’t like you getting in my head like that.”

Taliesin actually laughed, not a belly laugh but at least a cheerful one. Then he gestured at the scenery around us.

“Given where we are, Tal, how can I really avoid ‘getting in your head’?”

Well, he had me there.

“What was that…that red thing?” I asked, wanting to change the subject as much as I really wanted an answer to the question.

Taliesin sighed. “I fear the answer will not be any more to your liking than anything else I have said. Do you promise to hear me out this time? No interruptions, no shouting, no denial.”

“All right,” I said reluctantly. I hated to buy further into whatever delusional fantasy my brain had cooked up, but denying what I was experiencing did not make it any less real. I had found that out the hard way the first time I had felt someone’s death.

Taliesin looked around. “To give us a place to talk, I have been pulling this image out of my memory and…projecting it to you, but it is so elaborate it is rather taxing to maintain for such a long period. Would you mind if we switched to a little more confined environment? It would be easier for me to keep a smaller scale illusion going.”

Aside from the fact that I had seen the landscape almost disintegrate earlier, I had to admit that it did seem real. When I had fallen earlier, I had seen every blade of grass, had felt grass beneath my hands. I could feel the warm breeze against my skin. I could see the sunlight sparkle on the water of the rippling surface of the lake and on the more distant snowy mountain peaks. If the circumstances had been different, I would have accepted it all as real without question. To think that Taliesin was somehow conjuring the whole scene up would have been truly impressive—if Taliesin had been real.